The Canadiana build thread

[ryanprins13]

The last photos in the above post were supposed to go with this but there were too many characters so I have to make a second one.

Past Grand Prairie I ran into an interesting problem. We ran into an incredible downpour and with my front tires being so worn and having to use so much throttle just to drive the car pulled all over in the wet. One tire would slip a little, then the other, then back to the other.... just little quarter second slips here and there switching sides made me take up the whole lane to do a normal speed so I had to slow down a fair bit. Hard rains also sent my fuel mileage into the tank: 26mpg.... From grande prairie we had a mad dash to westiva. We drove through that rain I just mentioned, went home for 1 hour to quickly do a wheel alignment and grab things we needed and get rid of things we didn't need. Turns out I had 1/4 inch of toe in.... So I gave myself 1/32 of toe. We got to Ian Cassleys (host for westiva) place at 9:30pm. We made 800km that day.
The next day was Westiva which was awesome. I locked my keys in my car and Julie had left her set in the car as well. Turns out 2 other attendees had keys that unlocked my car...

Leaving Westiva and going to my parents is where the big trouble started. It should have been a 3hr drive and it took us over 6hrs. There is a ring road around Calgary I was taking that has a decent hill, it was hot out and my temperature gauge was up but not out of the ordinary. Just as I was cresting the hill I lost most of my power and the temp gauge shot all the way up. I couldn't maintain speed and my temperature was too high and wasn't going down on the other side of the hill so I had to pull over on the freeway and let it cool off with the fan going. I couldn't see anything wrong so when I was back to 180f coolant I went to drive again. Made it about 2 miles, probably less and had to pull over. I still couldn't find anything wrong other than oil being sprayed on my engine and I couldn't find the source. I now thing the crankcase got over-pressurized and it blew out past seals and hose connections. so I removed my grille, retarded my timing and turned the cabin heat all the way up. I had a manual switch for my rad fan so it was always running. with the cabin heat on full and the windows open I could keep my temperature down to about 220f but I could only do 50mph on the flat, 40mph on hills. The speed limit on that freeway being 70mph and most people doing 75. On long hills my temperature would get too high and I had to pull over. I tried everything I could think of. I filled up with new gas, I stopped at a store to buy intake cleaner and grease and stuff and let the engine cool way off, but nothing helped. We had been driving like that for hours and I was cresting a hill at like 35mph with my instrument cluster temp gauge pegged at the top and I knew I had to pull over but i figured i would coast down the other side of the hill in 5th first to help the car cool off. Something happened going down that hill and my temperature gauge literally dropped like a rock and I had all my power back. I didn't shift out of 5th for like 45min because I had no idea if that had anything to do with it. We made it to my parents without it going bad again, it was really weird.

So then I removed my spark plugs and they were destroyed. All melted and blasted away from the detonation. cyl 1 and 4 were the worst. I borrowed my parents car and went to the nearby town but only had one choice for spark plugs, all the other stores had nothing for the festiva. we left the sick kids at my parents and I drove 1.5hrs home with the new plugs towing the trailer. I had the timing so far retarded that I had no power to get going in first gear. trying to leave a gas station parking lot that had a slight hill I stalled 4 times, even revving the car way up and slipping the clutch bad. Just no low down power. I asked a lot of questions and got a lot of help on the forum. I took my car to the shop where I work, bought colder spark plugs, looked in my cylinders with a boroscope but couldn't see anything with it. I tried to set my timing but my car would just die with the sti connection grounded so i couldn't. It didn't matter where i turned the distributor while the sti was grounded it would just die. I sprayed lots of cleaner down the intake manifold and the spark plug holes, cleaned the massive amounts of oil out of my intake tubing and vaf, tried to spray water in the intake while it was running to steam clean it.... I took all the negative camber out of the front and set the toe. Its incredible how much the toe has to change from -2deg to zero. I advanced my timing to where I could run midgrade gas (89 octane) with no knocking with the colder plugs. I removed my washer sprayer nozzle and aimed it at my radiator so if i got too hot again i could spray it at the rad and cool it more like that. never ended up using that. I changed my pcv routing again. I drilled out a pcv valve and vented both the pcv outlet and the other valve cover hole to my catch can which I vented to atmosphere. I ordered new tires to be shipped to Tabitha in thunder bay, my fronts were toast after only 12,000km (7500 miles). A week after we got home we were ready to go again to the east coast!

[ryanprins13]

When we went to leave the trailer was heavier than before and there was more weight in the back of the car and on the tongue of the trailer. I cranked the rear coilover springs up as high as I could and then did another wheel alignment on the street. We left and I heard the knocking from the timing being advanced too far but just thought it was my copper oil pressure line rattling on the firewall. We stopped to weigh everything. 1366 pounds front axle, 1430 pounds rear axle and 1760 pounds trailer axle. This was with no gerry can of gas, not all of our water jugs full and not as much food as we had later on in our trip. Before the end of this first day I ran out of gas and had to hitchhike to a town with a gerry can. I always kept some gas in a gerry can after that, so the trailer was about 2000 pounds with 230-260 pounds of tongue weight depending on how much gas I had, a full gerry can being 35 or 40 pounds right on the tongue. You can read about all our adventures and see the photos here:
https://fordfestiva.com/forums/showt...ifetime!/page9


but I left out a lot of details about the car which i will briefly try to fill in here. The first day I used 700ml of oil to do 440km . I wasn't burning or leaking any, that's what blew through my separator and into my intake.
The second day of my trip started through the rocky mountains and was the same 700ml in 370km. I was getting 32mpg and still didn't know I was detonating or that my blow-by was so bad so I decided that because i had my car floored all the time it must be sucking the oil through. So I vented the separator to atmosphere. I ran the hose into the passenger wheel well through the hole in the fender for the air filter. Then I started leaking oil everywhere there, making a mess in parking lots and getting oil on that tire and down the side of my car. But that second or third day into our trip I smashed up 2 more fingers on the same hand that I already had stitches in so I was basically out for working on the car. I could only use my thumb and pinkie on that left hand...


I also found out that first week how challenging it was to tow a heavy trailer with a fwd car on anything other than pavement with wide front tires... I spun out trying to make it up the driveway where I used to live.


About a week later I blew out 1 quart in 1150km, then right after that I added 700ml in 200km.
Then the big trouble. 300km later I ran dry enough of oil that my oil pressure gauge started fluctuating.... I had been getting 33mpg in favorable conditions with the a/c on while towing and as low as 27.5 in steep mountains and windy conditions with the a/c on again. My oil consumption was all over the map though, even after I ran it dry of oil it would still go anywhere from a quart in 1000km to a quart in 300km depending on how much detonation I had I guess. The side of my trailer and car became black and you got oil all over you if you touched anything. That became a big problem with the kids...


Once we got to Whitehorse in the Yukon I stopped by a napa and bought what I needed to restore the stock pcv system and block my crankcase vent. after 500km I had used no oil but it was noticeably darker. my oil had not changed color on the dipstick before this. The roads in the Yukon and Alaska were completely insane. I had expected rough roads but not long sections of gravel that i couldn't do over 30kmh on. Or sections of pavement I couldn't do 60kmh on. The bumps were bad enough that I broke a spring on the trailer and the jack on my trailer hit the pavement so many times i am surprised its still attached and didn't bend. I should have greased the bottom... The 150 pound springs and long bump stops were fine for all of Canada except Quebec, the Yukon and Alaska. I am not sure if 180 pound springs would have been enough but it would have made a big improvement in the comfort of our northern travels.

Just before anchorage Alaska I managed to knock my front wheel alignment out badly. I felt it right away when it happened and noticed the bad tire wear. I had not brought my alignment tools with me and in anchorage I took a guess and added some toe out. I also had to tighten a rear wheel bearing as it had become loose. That became a problem throughout the trip of which I am not sure the cause. We were about 6000km (3500 miles) into the trip at this point. We left anchorage and the car was still driving weird and I was getting bad wear on the front. In Fairbanks I noticed an inner LCA bolt was loose (which i had checked with a wrench in anchorage). My brand new grade 10 lockwasher was flat and useless but I didn't have a spare with me so I tightened that and tried adjusting my toe a little again. I also had to tighten the other rear wheel bearing there. Not too much further down the road i had to tighten the lca bolt again.


We drove quite a ways further up to Dawson city. The top of the world highway was super cool but a challenging drive. Much of it was gravel and washboard. Really steep hills and amazing scenery. There was a couple times where I was sightseeing too much and didn't gear down soon enough for a hill and had to finish it in first gear. That wasn't fun because with towing a heavy trailer using a front wheel drive car with 165 wide summer street tires the odds of spinning out on loose gravel on the steep hills was high.


In Dawson city is where our youngest son Joshua got hurt very badly and both kids got quite sick. We were also a little sick. After he was stitched back up we decided to do a 'fast run' back home. That ended up taking 6 days, but anyway...


I tried to buy some wheel alignment tools in Dawson city but they really didn't have what I needed. A $2 tape measure was $18 and no angle iron, I bought super expensive u shaped shelving brackets which I found out when I got home weren't straight... I tried to set the toe there but not too far down the road the tire wear made it obvious that hadn't worked.

I couldn't find a paved pullout anywhere after driving for hours so We pulled onto a gravel pullout, I set the camber of the drivers front to what looked kinda like zero, left the passenger side at -2deg and swapped front tires to opposite sides and reset the toe best I could. If I had left it I would have blown my tires before I got home, the inner wear had been insane, then i adjusted it too far the other way and had massive outer wear...



I drove as far and as fast as I could each day but with limited places to camp, 2 kids and a small car pulling a big trailer in the mountains i think we were only making about 700km/day. Our longest day was 900km I think. My fuel mileage dropped with the fast pace and higher speeds, it ranged between 27.5 and 32 still, but mostly around 30. There was a stretch I was doing 130kmh down every hill and pushing it hard to maintain speed up hills. I had to add oil for the first time once we got back to Whitehorse. The oil was quite dark but I only used 700ml in 3800km (2400 miles).


There was a spot near Duhu lake that ended up being the hottest i let my car get on this trip. The ambient temperature was not warm, it was only 19c (66f) out but I met a really long hill. Ended up being a couple miles of being floored in second gear around 4500-5000rpm. I did not have enough power for third gear. As you slow down on hills like that your airspeed through the radiator slows and with being floored at that rpm your engine is putting out almost its maximum heat (6k rpm would have been more, but you still are putting out full hp and torque at 5000rpm). I had my coolant up to 245f and the oil up to that same temperature. With my water/glycol mixture and higher pressure rad cap I had figured 240f was the hottest I could safely get since my boiling point should have been 250f at that elevation. However I was reading 245f at the block outlet hose, I am sure there were hot spots inside the block that were boiling... That temperature for oil is fine for a short period.

[ryanprins13]

When we were back from the 1000km test trip I sanded my front brake pads, lubed the sliders and bled out the fluid I had boiled in the front. My front crank seal was leaking bad so Julian came out and helped me change it and the cam seal quick after work one day. We put the timing belt back on wrong and I had to drive it 100km home and back with the timing a tooth or 2 off, that was painful. We changed it back the next day. On my last day of work I changed the oil, drove home and drained that and put the synthetic diesel oil in. 1qt 5w40 with the rest 5w30. I put an over sized amsoil filter on it as well.
I made an air/oil separator at work. I ended up in the hospital and got 3 stitches in my finger from making that just 3 days before we left I think. I hooked it up to the block vent port I made on my B3 just before we left with some help from my father in law because I couldn't push hoses onto fittings. I took photos of how I hooked it up. It didn't work because I advanced my timing too far and had a ton of detonation and blowby from that. I used 1/2in hose instead of 5/8, I made the seperater too small because my bypass filter was in the way, my block vent has no baffling, my seperater to the block vent was a bad angle, it should be straight up and down like it would be if it were where the bypass filter is.

We left on our trip June 5th 2018 and drove about 29,000km all over the country. We got back Sept 16, 2018.

[ryanprins13]

test trip may 19-21 Here is the blog post of our test trip, some good photos in there. https://prinsfamilyadventures.blogsp...test-trip.html I will add a few photos that I didn't put on the blog. I'm trying to remember what the test trip was like as far as driving the car but its hard to remember since I have towed 30,000km since then... I didn't know how heavy the trailer was when we left but my 170 pounds of tongue weight was too light so I filled up a gerry can and put it in the tongue, it was fine after that. We got to the scale and the front axle was 1390 pounds, rear axle was 1345 and axle trailer was 1750 pounds. There was 200 pounds on the tongue making the trailer 1950 pounds. This was heavier than I wanted but not too bad, things unfortunately got heavier for our actual trip...Things like loosing the grease cap on the trailer are in that blog post. This test trip was without the kids and was meant to see what the car and trailer could handle and what was safe and so on. I had it up to 145kmh and it was very stable, no sway and it went quite straight. I started at lower speeds and worked my way up inducing sway on the highway when no one else was around and the trailer self corrected very quickly every time. I took a very long hill and got the car fairly hot. Well, what I thought was hot, coolant got to 210f and the oil got to 230f which was nothing compared to a few good hills on our summer trip later. (spoiler alert: I had my coolant at 245f and the oil at the same on one hill later on. With my water/glycol mixture I had figured 240f was the hottest I could safely get since my boiling point should have been 250f in theory))
The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHcijoX0NKg I did that hill twice actually because at the top I turned around to come back down and test the brakes. Waited till there was no one in front of us for quite a ways and then went back down. I didnt believe I could overheat my brakes and needed to know. I went a fair bit over the speed limit and kind of rode my brakes the whole way down to hold my speed. That heats them up a lot and is never how you brake if your trying not to overheat them... The last 400yards I felt the pedal get slightly soft so I pulled over at the bottom. Brake temps were 450f front, 200f rears and 230f on the trailer drums. I now knew what the limit of my brakes was and went back up the mountain to continue on. We tried to test everything else out too but I think that was the main things. There are videos of the trailer and stuff in the blog. The trailer was surprising heavy and hard to get moving with. We did a steep hillstart on grass that was quite challenging. Hill starts are pretty hard on the clutch. We were happy with the results of the test trip and were ready for our real trip! well not really ready...

[ryanprins13]

may 7, 2018 got a new windshield and wipers installed! Brakes bled and dot4 fluid put in for the higher boiling point.


may 11 window tint installed, I think it was 12% rear and 50% fronts.



may 15 I drained the coolant and flushed it out twice with distilled water. Drained that third time and put in 750ml of glycol, a cooling additive called water wetter and water. Straight water can transfer more heat and the water wetter reduces surface tension which helps a lot in theory. Water has a lower boiling point but I had all new hoses and installed a 16psi cap, so the boiling point should be basically the same, it just cools better till it gets there with less glycol.

may 16 I did a wheel alignment and flushed the transmission. I drained the atf and put cheap 80w90 in and drove a few miles. Drained that back out and put that amsoil 75w90 in.
The next day I did a compression test (180.190,180,190) and changed to my new motocraft spark plugs.

Then I drained 1quart of my 5w30 oil and poured in a quart of 15w40. I figured the dino oil could use some extra protection. I bought a hitch/receiver thingy the right drop to get my trailer exactly level but didn't like how far it stuck out. I shortened how far it stuck out so there was less leverage on the hitch. Then I went on a test trip to the mountains with the trailer!
Here is an engine bay shot

[ryanprins13]

April 10, 2018 I got my left hand thread die in the mail and cleaned up my spindle threads so I could put my new nuts on. That worked quite well! Then i discovered I couldnt do a rear wheel alignment because of how badly the drums were warped. They were real bad. So I just hoped my rear camber shims didnt move too far when I did the spindles. I also picked my transmission lube i ended up using for towing

[ryanprins13]

March 23 I rustproofed the car again

march 30 and 31 weekend I went to my parents where my parts cars were buried in snow. Walked over a mile with a lot of heavy tools, dug a parts car out and broke it free from the frozen ground. It was too cold for my torch to work so i had a very hard time getting strut bolts off and the spindle bolts off without breaking them but I took a left hand thread spindle off my parts car. It turned out to be cleaner than the rest that I had.

I took it to work and cleaned it up and where the bearings run is real nice, but where the grease seal seals isnt, probably will need a new grease seal once a year.


Here is a video i posted on facebook of how well the rust converter worked. In the comments is info about what to use to lube the self adjuster. https://m.facebook.com/groups/187474...51060363804959

I drilled a cotter pin hole in that spindle, used rust converter on it, sprayed it, polished it. cleaned up the adjuster with rust converter and sprayed it and the spindle with cold galvanizing.



had to make holes in backing plate bigger to fit new wagner wheel cylinder which had the bolt holes in the wrong spots. The napa one on other side fit good. I sanded the old shoes, used new hardware drum, bearings and seal. Then the new nut didnt want to go on this side either! I used an old one.


here again you can see why I had to replace the spindle...

[ryanprins13]

march 18, 2018 I replaced the tie rod end boots with new ones that were a bit short. nylon zip ties for now, I ordered metal ones that arent here yet. I cleaned all the 'old' grease out which had water in it from my torn boots and put new grease in. Hopefully this lasts a long time, Its not fun messing with.


I installed a new trans rod bushing on the shaft at the transmission side.

Then was the big project that ended in failure... I heated up my brand new drums but didnt have time to wait long enough so I pressed the races into them with a 20 ton shop press. I guess i probably pushed a little too hard. Anyway, the drums warped but i didnt know that yet.
So I took the passenger rear hub off, removed spindle and wheel cylinder. I had collected about 10 spindles total and had picked the best 2. None were fantastic. I spent a lot of time trying to get new ones from fourgreen and a korean guy on the facebook group but had no luck. I spent way too much time trying to place orders with fourgreen and having them cancelled over and over.
I Took a good spindle off another backing plate, sanded the spindle with 800grit and white (finest) scuff pad. used polish on it. cleaned up rust with a wire wheel and sodablasting. I drilled 1/8th hole for a cotter pin and cleaned the backing plate but couldnt get the new spindle in with a hammer so i pressed it in. nut was on the end of the shaft still and i crushed the nut badly, but the nut came off fine. I installed hub onto car, new wheel cylinder, new hardware, new shoes. cleaned up brake adjuster so it moved freely again, it was a bit stiff and will have to be done again. I put grease into drum and bearings and installed the grease seal.
Then the trouble started. the drum wouldn't go on. I sanded down the old brake shoes and installed them, then the drum went on. But now the new spindle nut would not go on, it just would cross thread. I spent hours trying to clean the threads but ended up putting 2 washers on it, crossthreading a nut on and putting it outside so i could go home.

In the before photos you can see how rough of shape that spindle was in

[ryanprins13]

feb 24, 2018 I installed all new front brake hardware, I lowered my steering wheel and did a few other little things. I made a seperate thread on how to lower your steering wheel, its here: https://fordfestiva.com/forums/showt...steering+wheel

[ryanprins13]

I figure I better do a short and quick update of what happened last winter. here goes:

February 10th 2018 I pulled my rockers out and cleaned the hla's to get rid of the bad ticking. only 199,000km (125k miles) but they were badly scored up. likely from me running that additive. The exhaust ones were worse than the intake side. I cleaned everything in varsol, made sure all the passages were free and got the carbon chunks the additive knocked loose out. I primed the hlas and reinstalled. no more ticking!20180210_120955.jpg

[Dragonhealer]

Below freezing, you are asking me? It will get below 70 here tonight.......
Let me know if it gradually gets better on it's own, I have a silly theory about the learning capability of the ECU......shudder, freezing.,...

[bravekozak]

Stuck EGR valve?

[ryanprins13]

WHOA Whoa whoa there...

"Wrecked the motor", as in, WRECK wreck? Or wreck as in "the motor is failing" wreck?

And I'm sure I won't be the only one to say Well Done, Sir. Well Done. That's a feat surely to be referenced time and time again in the future. Very, very cool. :-)

Well i advanced my timing too far and had tons of detonation which increased blowby. I was venting to atmosphere so it blew all the oil out of my crankcase 3 times and i ran dry 3 times because of that. Blew my spark plugs to bits and presumably the pistons and heads too. My super large bypass filter eventually plugged with soot and i started plugging oil filters frequently. I was chamging oil filters every 450miles when i was given wrong directions and drove for an hour on a plugged oil filter. Thats when i went from burning no oil to burning a quart every 60 miles. If i went 100 miles without stopping i would run dry on oil. Did that 8-10 times on the last stretch home. The oil was fouling spark plugs and i was having detonation even with premium fuel. Got a bad tank of gas a day away from home. I was plugging oil filters every 280 miles at that point and all my octane additive didnt help that tank of gas. I drove with it knocking real bad for an hour and a half then topped the tank up which helped. But i destroyed 6 spark plugs in like 6 or 7hrs that day and had to buy more like 3hrs from home where i had buckets of em....
By the time i got home i was plugging filters every 280 miles, blowing 500ml of oil into my catch can every 100 miles and burning a quart in 60 or 70 miles. New spark plugs lasted 45min even on premium fuel. Covered my trailer with soot from my exhaust driving on 3cylinders. The last couple thousand km I would foul a plug every hour or less and have to swap plugs around. I had like 8 i was swapping between. So the motor made it home, but i would call that being on its way out, lol.

It was a cool trip for sure and i learned a ton! Like how to do fast side of the road oil changes

Ryan, that is totally EPIC, hats off to you and the Family!
First impressions with the B6 installed???

Thanks! The b6 has lotsa power! But when i commute i dont use it. I commute 2hrs a day or more depending on traffic and i floor the car maybe 10 times a year while commuting.... trying to see what fuel milage its capable of now. Have one problem with it that im not sure on. When its cold out (below freezing) and in the first 2-3 miles of driving anything more than 1/8th throttle makes it bog down. As soon as the motor warms up a little its fine. B3 intake and intake manifold. B3 exhaust. Any ideas?

Sent from my SM-G920W8 using Tapatalk

[Dragonhealer]

Wow, i did so much work to this car that i never had the time to post about, it was just a mad rush to get ready for the trip and make those rear suspension bushings. We finished our trip and the car did fantastic. I made some mistakes with the car and wrecked the motor. I put a B6 in it when we got home. But we made it to the west coast, Alaska, Niagra falls and the east coast. 29,000km pulling a 2000 pound trailer and 4 of us in the car. The trip was 3.5 months and was awesome. Super busy now that we are back home though. I wish i wasnt so far behind on this thread... i will try and figure out where i left off and keep this going at some point.

Sent from my SM-G920W8 using Tapatalk

Ryan, that is totally EPIC, hats off to you and the Family!
First impressions with the B6 installed???

[RayRay]

WHOA Whoa whoa there...

"Wrecked the motor", as in, WRECK wreck? Or wreck as in "the motor is failing" wreck?

And I'm sure I won't be the only one to say Well Done, Sir. Well Done. That's a feat surely to be referenced time and time again in the future. Very, very cool. :-)